Land Use Change Lesson Plan
For Teachers: The following lesson plan is designed for use with the section of the After
Earth Science website entitled Land Use Change
( www.lifeafterearthscience.com/gc_landuse.php
) and images shown there. This lesson contains a worksheet to be printed for student use, to facilitate interaction and learning.
We also recommend the following sources:
Google Earth: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Site managed by the National Aeronautic and
Space Administration (NASA); images of earth compiled by satellites . http://climate.nasa.gov/state_of_flux Site managed by NASA; pre and post images of various regions. Interactive map allows searches by descriptors including human impact, cities, ice, land cover, and others.
Materials needed : Computers/ access to web
Historical photos of your town, city, area or region. These images can be found by searching with keyword combinations like “city name,” “date” and “images of land area”.
(Example: “Sydney images 1950” and then the “images” tab.) Alternatively, a local historical museum could allow students to do their own search for areas of interest to them. A fun project could be to find an old photo or map of a neighbourhood or area, and then to take their own photo (from the same vantage point) or to make (or purchase) a current map to compare to the historical image.
Goal: To explore land change as a function of human activity on the earth over time.
Objective: Students will be able to predict interspecies conflict based on analysis of the present and historical land usage of local and global land areas.
Overview: Directions for the exercise are contained in the body of the lesson plan.
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Students will first brainstorm questions about land use, and define terms.
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Students then consider the things they need to survive in an environment
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Students will next explore these concepts by accessing the After Earth website and other web resources to collect data and consider information about land use.
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Students are asked to work in a group and prepare a skit or a story to present their thoughts about the graphic representation of Ecosystem Services.
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Returning to the website, more information will guide them to consider the effects of cities on ecosystems.
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Next, a short game is played in which desks or tables are moved together to represent uncut forest. A crunched up piece of paper made into a ball is than adequate for this activity. A Nerf ball could also be used. Directions are in the lab. This game simulates the concept of wildlife corridors —continuous wild or semi-wild land needed for animals and plants to disperse and/or migrate over their range. When barriers exist, plants and animals get cut off from their normal ranges and habitat islands can form. These relatively new ecological concepts can be researched in more detail on the web by using the key words
“habitat islands” and “wildlife corridors”.
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Finally, students are invited to consider having a guest speaker come to their classroom.
Extensions:
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Invite a city planner, local council member or state or federal land use planning professional into your classroom to speak about this topic. How is their agency/business/committee/representative body integrating information about land use change into areas greater and lesser than the area for which they have planning responsibility? What do they see as the single greatest land use change issue confronting your area?
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Have the students design questions for the speaker and send them to the speaker ahead of time
Possible formative assessments for this lesson:
1. Compare, or have students compare, their list of questions about land use planning from the beginning and the end of the lab.
2. What happens to land over time when people suddenly disappear
– or stop using an area? In the film After Earth , Jaden and his father crash land on Earth 1000 years after humans on Earth have become extinct. What changes do you think result from the absence of humans? What changes do you think could be left over from the effects of human-caused global change? Write a paragraph describing any Land Use changes you think you have seen in the film. Include in your paragraph the terms that you defined at the beginning of this lesson.

3. Large areas across Central America were once heavily used by the Classic
Mayan civilization, which included large cities and intensive agriculture. Then, over a very brief period of time, that entire civilization collapsed and vanished.
(The Mayan people remain, but the civilization disappeared.) Using the web, research current hypotheses about why that civilization collapsed. How much time has passed since that collapse? What do the areas that were once great
Mayan cities and agricultural areas look like today?

Land Use Change Student Worksheet
Objective: Students will be able to predict interspecies conflict based on analysis of the present and historical land usage of local and global land areas.
Recent studies show that land use affects some ecosystems more than climate change.
Write down 3 questions you would like to ask someone about Land Use Planning in your town or city:
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Here are some terms that will be useful in this lesson. Define below:
Habitat
Land Use Planning
Buildout (or Build Out)
Survey (ecological and land)
Monoculture
Ecologist
Land use is a major driver of ecological change and global climate change. An ecologist will often conduct a survey when studying organisms in a natural habitat. They will note things like the “percent of cover” which is a representation of total plant life in an area, and “plant diversity” which is how many different kinds of plants exist in that area, and where water and rocks and other land forms are found in that area.
Humans need many things to survive on the earth. People often want other things in their environments because those things are nice to have.

Complete the table below:
Things I NEED to survive in my environment
Things I WANT in my environment
Now compare your answ ers with someone else’s and note the differences below:
Read the first paragraph about Land Use Change on the After Earth website
( www.lifeafterearthscience.com/gc_landuse.php
).
In this paragraph the statement is made “until recently, land use was considered by most people – including scientists and government officials – to be a local issue.” Discuss the following with your neighbour:
Why do many people now consider that local land use change should be thought of as a global issue?
Write down a sentence, in your own words, that tells your class why people in the state next to yours should care about how you all use your land, locally.

Read the second paragraph from the website. One fact stated in this paragraph is that 90% of the primary forests were cut in the United States between the years
1620 and 1920.
In your own words, what is a “primary forest”? (HINT: the reading will help you define this!!)
What are some differences between primary and secondary forests?
How do you think the agricultural term “monoculture” might apply here?
Do you think there is a greater or lesser diversity of plants and animals when a monoculture is in place?
You have probably heard that there is lots of forest being cut in the tropics. Often there are stories in the news about tropical rainforests being cut. Take a look at the next image on the Land Use Change webpage, which shows an image of Mato Grosso state rainforest in Brazil. How does what has happened in this image compare to changes documented by the maps of the primary forests in the USA?
Comparison of forest cutting in Mato Grosso, Brazil (1992-2006) and USA (1620-
1920)
Similarities Differences

Go to the Biodiversity page ( www.lifeafterearthscience.com/biodiversity.php
) and look at the circle graphic of Ecosystem Services (3/4 of the way down the page). There are four categories of services. (They appear around the outside of the circle.)
List them below: (The first letter has been written for you)
S_________________________
P_________________________
R_________________________
C_________________________
As a class, divide into four groups, each representing one category. Each group should consider the “ecological services” that relate to its category. Discuss how you think forest cutting (or other habitat disturbance) changes the functioning of these ecological services. (Your teacher will tell you whether you will present your findings by writing an answer to the prompt below, or whether you and your group will present your findings in skit form to the entire class.)
In your own words, tell the story of what changes happen with forest loss.
Much of the film After Earth is filmed at a biological reserve station in Costa Rica.
The Costa Rican government and citizens have made forest preservation a priority, so they still have uncut primary rain forest. Again, return to the Land Use
Change webpage, and read and view the information about Costa Rica and the
Organization for Tropical Studies.
From the standpoint of the ecosystem’s ability to support life, what do you see as the challenges when population increase and urban development causes deforestation to occur?
What can people do to offset these challenges?
Try the following activity. Move all the desks or tables so that the tops are touching and form a LONG rectangle in the center of your room. Have the class divide in half, with each group standing at one end of the rectangle. Select a team representative to
“play.” Roll a small, soft ball (it can be made of squashed paper, or be a real ball) down

the centre from one player to the other. How hard is it to catch? Roll the ball back and forth 10 times. How many times was the ball able to make it to the opposite end?
The surface of the desks represents uncut, virgin habitat. The ball represents an organism or group of organisms migrating or moving across the land. (For example, caribou in Canada through to Alaska. Or Salmon moving up the Columbia River in
Washington and Oregon. Or Monarch butterflies migrating from the Northern US to
Central and South America.
List other examples of animals that migrate.
Now return to the game. “Clear” some of the forest (or other habitat), by removing some of the desks or tables. Again have the players roll the ball back and forth. How successful were they? How many times was the ball able to make the “journey”?
Remove some more tables or desks. Again, play the game.
At what point can the ball
NOT make the journey?
This game illustrates the concept of “wildlife corridors.” Both plants and animals spread or move based on the formation of the land, and the arrangement of cities and wild lands. Look again at the pictures of Costa Rica on the Land Use webpage.
Where might animals have difficulties?
How might plants be affected? (Think about seed dispersal)
How can citizens and land use planners make sure that wildlife corridors are adequate?
Should we have to plan wildlife corridors in cities, towns, or our yards?
In the temperate zone, we usually think of seasonally migrating animals as traveling across long distances horizontally. In Costa Rica, many animals migrate vertically – up and down mountainsides to follow fruiting plants or changes in temperature and rainfall. Using Google Earth or a similar resource, locate the La Selva
Biological Station and view it in a mode that enables you to see forest cover. Now locate
Braulio Carillo National Park. If you look closely, you will see that part of the national park extends down a mountainside and touches the grounds of the La Selva Biological station, which is located in an area of Caribbean Lowland Rain Forest. These protected areas together create a wildlife corridor from lowland rain forest to upper-altitude cloud

forest. Can you find any other examples of wildlife corridors in Costa Rica? In Central
America? In the United States?
Another change that happens when people cut the land and build cities is depicted in the last image on the webpage. This image shows the Great Lakes region of the US. What is happening in this picture?
Can you think of any local examples of this?
Return to the Land Use Change webpage, and follow the link to the NASA website entitled “NASA State of Flux-- Images of Change.” http://climate.nasa.gov/state_of_flux
Choose three areas from the map and view them. For each, write a description below about what is occurring. Also list some of the plants and animals you think might be affected.
1.
2.
3.
Be prepared to present your favourite image of change from above to the class.

A land use planner is a person who figures out what the likely consequences of changes to the land will be, and helps people to make informed choices about these changes. A city planner is a land use planner that works in a city or urban area.
Now that you have done these studies, write down 3 questions based on your work in this lab about things you would like to ask a land use planner.
Invite a land use planner to your classroom and ask these questions. Before this person comes, you may want to investigate the following:
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Green Building
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LEED Construction
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Wildlife corridors
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Rooftop gardens
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Building and Development laws and regulations